


The Crook Chronicles - Mrs Crook

by Lenny9987



Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-15 04:57:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5772160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not long ago on Tumblr, writtenthroughtime and I were chatting fic and spitballing ideas around and we wound up devising a plan for a co-writing project/experiment thing. The stories are related but also independent and we’re writing and publishing them simultaneously. I’m focusing on Mrs. Crook while writtenthroughtime takes Mr. Crook. We’ll be cross linking as much as we can but this is an experiment and we’re still figuring it out so thank you in advance for your patience. </p>
<p>And don’t forget to send us feedback!</p>
<p>
  <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5735968/chapters/13217485">writtenthroughtime's The Crook Chronicles - Mr Crook</a>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The New Lady Broch Tuarach

Mrs. Crook had been with the Frasers at Lallybroch for a long while. She couldn’t think of Jenny as a Murray after having watched the lass grow up, no matter how many years she and Ian might be married - Jenny was a Fraser, through and through. Jenny and Ian were good to her and kept a decent run of the place since Brian had passed. The Frasers had always been good to Mrs. Crook and her people and she was confident that whenever young Jamie returned to take his place as laird, he would do his father proud. 

It was easy for Mrs. Crook to forget that she had ever lived anywhere other than Lallybroch - that was part of why she liked it so much. But in her youth she had lived a bit farther afield, just the other side of the estate’s border with the MacKenzie Clan lands. It was an out of the way farmstead - only a bit larger than a croft but her father had taken great pride in it when she was a wee lass. 

When she was but fifteen, a young Mr. Crook won her hand - according to some, it was accomplished literally, her hand in marriage being the stakes agreed to by her father during the gaming of a rousing night of celebratory feasting and drinking following the harvest. She was happy enough in her marriage though she might have been happier if Mr. Crook could afford to bring his wife to a home of their own instead of the loft above his parents and old grandmother. His parents were kind enough but his grandmother told tales about the nearby hills - fairy stories that young Mrs. Crook found… unsettling. But her grandmother-in-law insisted on their veracity and the responsibility the old woman persisted in forcing on the young bride. 

“My son and his wife, they dinna believe as they should but these things… they arena meant to be passed direct, ye ken,” the old woman would rant. “It should ha’ been my granddaughter I passed this on to but I wasna gifted wi’ one till my grandson married ye.”

The youngest Mrs. Crook listened politely to the oldest Mrs. Crook’s tales before turning and urging her husband that they should find themselves a situation of their own as soon as possible. After the Gathering at Leoch when the Laird’s sister absconded with her lover, the searching men of the clan carried with them news and an opportunity. When Ellen MacKenzie was found married to Brian Fraser and became ignored by her family in practice if not in name, Mr. and Mrs. Crook made the journey to Lallybroch to offer their services and were lucky enough to be taken on - Mrs. Crook assisting the new Lady Broch Tuarach in the kitchen and around the main house while her husband helped the Laird in his running of the estate. Mrs. Crook was able to let her husband’s grandmother and her tales fade from her memory in the years and trials that followed.

Until the new Lady Broch Tuarach arrived.

Learning that Jamie had married a Sassenach was enough to catch the interest of most folks at Lallybroch - Mrs. Crook included - but it did not take long for Claire to win many of them over with her kind and eager way. Her healing capabilities went a long way too. It was undeniable, though, that there was something else about her that was… unusual. 

Mrs. Crook wasn’t in the room when Jamie and his bride first told Jenny and Ian about the circumstances of their meeting and marriage. She learned the truth from Claire herself sometime later when Mrs. Crook expressed confusion over how Claire had found herself in the Highlands in the first place. She was helping the Lady grind her plants and herbs for steeping. 

“I was traveling along the road to Inverness with a servant when we were… accosted. I lost track of the servant and most of my belongings - my horse and carriage, obviously - and was effectively wandering the countryside alone when I came upon Redcoats skirmishing with some of the men from Clan MacKenzie. One of the Redcoats had me cornered and was being… well, let’s leave it at the fact that I was not _un_ happy that Murtagh appeared and knocked the man unconscious. Of course, then Murtagh knocked _me_ on the head and I was brought to Dougal who… offered… _persuasively_ to bring me - under his protection - to Colum to appeal for the clan’s protection on a more formal and… indefinite basis,” Claire ended, diplomatically.

Mrs. Crook had noticed the stops and starts to Claire’s story, the moments of hesitation and discomfort, but she ignored them.

“Accosted on the road, ye say? On yer way te Inverness? Ye must ha’ been near the city for anyone te bother wi’ such a venture,” Mrs. Crook remarked before noticing that Claire had pulled several large volumes from Jamie’s library and had them open on the table. 

Claire was laying samples of the flowers and herbs she’d collected onto the pages, carefully arraying them to best advantage. She was about to close the first book when Mrs. Crook intervened. 

“Ye shouldna use that,” she remarked. “Ye’ll mess the pages wi’ the juices.”

“I know but I spoke to Jamie about which books I could use that would fit my needs - you see I want proper samples preserved for reference-”

“I ken what ye’re tryin’ ta do,” Mrs. Crook assured her. “But ye needna ruin a good book te do it. Here,” Mrs. Crook held aloft a finger before vanishing down the hall to what had been her room since her husband had died (during the same bout of pox that carried off young master Willie). She returned with a plant press and held it out for Claire. “Do ye ken how to use one of these?” 

Claire nodded, turning it over in her hands. “I do. Someone… someone showed me how to use one just like this… some time ago now. Thank you.”

“My husband brought it for me after a journey te Edinburgh he took some years back on the laird’s business. He thought I might have use for it somewhere in the kitchen but I dinna use it often. Still, I’ll hand it on te my granddaughter I expect, when the time comes. She likes te press her wildflowers and might like te keep it for sentimental reasons,” Mrs. Crook explained with a smile. 

“I’ll be very careful with it then,” Claire smiled in return, closing Jamie’s books and setting them aside. “Um… I’m sorry but you had a question a moment ago. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten what it was.”

“Oh, just something about the road ye said ye were accosted on is all. A brazen thing for crofters to attempt with the English about. I spent my early days along that stretch of the MacKenzie lands and ken there are places to hide for such an attack but there are na so many to blame should the English come looking.”

“It was near a hill called Craigh Na Dun - I believe that’s what the locals call it, at least,” Claire said with dismissive wave of the hand as she noisily settled about her task of manipulating the press. Mrs. Crook had frozen at the name and became aware of Claire watching her from the corner of her eye. “Do you know it?”

“Aye,” Mrs. Crook managed, clearing her throat and willing her hands to continue with the work in front of her - the decoction needed to be strained and syphoned into a vial. “I ken the hill ye speak of.” She left her remarks at that and they slipped into the silence of concentration as they each pointedly focused on their task while remaining aware of the other’s attention. After a while, Claire’s focus on pressing her plants truly superseded her curiosity concerning Mrs. Crook’s reaction; Mrs. Crook continued to watch Claire in earnest not just as they progressed in their chore, but whenever Claire was nearby. 

_It might be naught but old age and fancy muddling my mind and yet I cannot shake the feeling of Grannie Crook standing behind me this afternoon and telling me to pay attention, that this lass would prove true what_ she _said and I ignored all those years ago. So I did. I watched my lady as she bent over the press. She was careful with the flowers, caressing them like they were precious and moving them about, fiddling as a wife fixes her husband’s dress, tucking things into place with a gentle touch. She does not have hands like any lady I have seen before. They are soft but not so soft as to mean anything but they are not rough or scarred in the way even Jenny’s are except for the little finger on her right hand - that one has a bit of a kink in it. I do not know what is me noticing her Englishness and what might be showing that she is one of them, those travelers Grannie Crook spoke of but I shall keep my eyes open till I am certain._


	2. Potatoes

Potatoes. In the weeks since Jamie and Claire had arrived at Lallybroch and Mrs. Crook’s suspicions were first aroused, there had been little to sway her opinion definitively one way or the other on the matter. But she’d been counting on having much more time to observe her new mistress before reaching a definitive conclusion and then having time enough to consider what she might do - what she _ought_  to do - before actually _doing_  whatever it was she decided. 

But Ronald MacNab had mucked it up with his bruised pride and yearning for something - whether he had betrayed Jamie as revenge for the beating Jamie had given him (which MacNab deserved) or simply for the money to spend on more drink didn’t matter. The effect was the same. Jamie was in English custody and the enigmatic Claire had gone after her husband with no telling if or when either of them would return. Only that suggestion that Lallybroch begin planting potatoes. 

It was such odd advice. Though it was true that Claire knew a great deal about plant and herbs, her knowledge was largely centered on those that served a purpose when it came to healing, not crops for farming.

When Jenny had ridden into the yard again, she had made a beeline for the kitchen where Mrs. Crook sat with a fussy Maggie - though no one could blame the newborn for not being satisfied with their poor substitutes for her mother’s milk. Jenny had been gone three days and it had been an extremely trying three days for Mrs. Crook with both the baby and young Jamie in her charge - Ian being rather laid up from the incident. And she had the meals still to fix, to say nothing of the waiting and not knowing. But in minutes Maggie was back in her mother’s arms and all sighed with relief as Maggie nursed greedily. 

“Yer brother,” Mrs. Crook began hesitantly. “Did ye and Mrs. Fraser find him?”

“Not exactly but we were certainly on the right trail when I left her,” Jenny informed Mrs. Crook as she set about fixing tea for the pair of them. “Murtagh met up wi’ us and he’ll be helping Claire track Jamie down. They’ll get him back, Mrs. Crook,” Jenny reassured her. “Dinna fash. Claire’s a determined woman and kens how to handle herself well enough. She’s a match for Jamie and no mistake.” 

It took a lot to awe a woman like Jenny but Claire had managed - helping the midwife with Maggie’s troublesome birth had helped but there was more to it than just the bonds forged in the birthing room, Mrs. Crook could see it in Jenny’s expression as she handed her a cup of tea.

“Mrs. Crook... do ye know anything about preparing... potatoes?”

“Potatoes? Preparing them to plant, ye mean?”

“To eat. Claire suggested - _insisted_  more like - she thinks it would be wise for us to start planting potatoes and laying them by,” Jenny explained.

“And ye mean we should do it?”

“Aye. My brother would want us to trust her judgment on matters such as these. And so long as we can find a manner of eating them, I dinna see the harm in trying.” Jenny looked down to Maggie who had fallen asleep with her belly finally full. Jenny shifted the infant to her shoulder, adjusting the fall of her shift, then began lightly patting Maggie’s back. “I’ll bring it up wi’ Ian later but I thought I would see what ye kent on them first.”

“Most things taste better wi’ a bit of heat and some salt,” Mrs. Crook observed absentmindedly. “That’s as good a place as any to start and we can go from there.”

Jenny nodded in agreement then leaned back in the chair. She looked about to drop and there were lines of worry creasing her forehead. 

In the days and weeks that followed, the potatoes were constantly being discussed and every time she heard the word, Mrs. Crook felt it as a jab at herself for not having made up her mind sooner. They were a rare foodstuff to see in the highland farms and for Claire to make such a suggestion at a time when she had so much more to worry about... it decided Mrs. Crook that Claire was not only one of the travelers Grannie Crook had told her of, but that Claire was from the future - how far she might never have the opportunity to learn. 

 _I had long hoped that I could set Grannie Crook’s tales aside as just that - stories. But now that I know Mrs. Fraser is one of them - that the travelers truly do exist - I cannot help but regret the fact I will not have the opportunity to know more. Grannie Crook spoke of helping these travelers as an obligation, that we who know of them are supposed to help them and shelter them the way we would anyone else who passed through and needed a roof or a bite. I did not understand - though I suppose it is because I did not believe the truth of her words - it is not a sense of duty that makes me want to help her, nor pity for the situation she and Himself are in (though I have more than enough on that score). I_ want _to help her, to know more of how it all happened and why she has come. _If something is coming, I want to be prepared, to make sure my family is safe._ I want to know what she knows so I can understand why potatoes are so important. _


	3. Preparations

It was well into the new year when they first received a letter from Claire. It was sent from a monastery in France and consisted of only the most basic information. Jamie had been found, they had fled the country, and Jamie was currently recovering from some sort of illness. The next few letters - written in Claire’s hand but with a shaky approximation of Jamie’s signature - provided no further details of how Claire and Murtagh had tracked Jamie down or gotten him away from the English, but were more forthcoming on their tentative plans for staying in Paris, Jamie working for his cousin Jared, a wine merchant (that letter had arrived with a few choice bottles that were quite welcome). 

There was little of substance in the letters that passed back and forth in the next months. It seemed as though Jamie and Claire would be making their home in France indefinitely. As Ian and the farm hands went about learning how to plant the potatoes, Mrs. Crook was able to settle her mind a bit more. Wherever Claire Fraser had come from, it was clear that she had no intention of returning there. If she did have knowledge of things that had yet to pass, she was too far out of Mrs. Crook's limited sphere of influence for the housekeeper to be of any assistance - Laird and Lady Broch Tuarach were apparently guests at the Royal court, what use could Mrs. Crook possibly be to the likes of Mrs. Fraser from so far away?  _If_ she was right about the lady at all, and the longer Claire was away, the easier it became for Mrs. Crook to dismiss the significance of what she'd noticed - even the potatoes.

After a time when there were fewer letters than usual, a short one came that simply announced Jamie and Claire were returning to Lallybroch for good. 

The house was in a bustle getting ready for the Laird's return - a pardon had been acquired so there would be no more threats from the English (and the MacNab issue had long been settled). As the day of their return grew nearer, Mrs. Crook felt the suspicions rising once more. Their coming back was a sign, a new opportunity for her to perform her duty (and silence the voice of old Grannie Crook) as well as to learn the answers to the questions of the future that were beginning to resurface within her. 

But there was something different about Claire when she and Jamie returned - him as well. They didn't talk of how Jamie had been located and rescued or what had happened in France, not even the circumstances of how they'd secured Jamie's pardon. From the murmurings she managed to overhear between Jenny and Ian, it sounded as though a child had been lost and Mrs. Crook's heart went out to the pair of them, though they seemed as close to one another as ever - perhaps more so. She wanted to offer her sympathies but couldn't find a way to broach the subject with Claire and so she avoided it altogether. It surprised her how much she missed the easy enthusiasm Claire had shown when she first arrived as Lady of the house. Claire was still invested in her healing and tending the tenants of the estate, but there were moments Mrs. Crook caught her looking dazed, seeing something other than what was in front of her and leaving Mrs. Crook to wonder whether the not-there thing she saw was from the past or the future.

That was another subject Mrs. Crook struggled to broach with Claire. How would a person ask a question like that if they expected to be answered honestly? She thought the potatoes might be a safe way to approach it as the first harvest drew closer.

"Other than cuttin' them up and puttin' them in a stew, I dinna ken how to cook the things for eating," Mrs. Crook informed Claire as they were working in the kitchen one afternoon. "Since I heard Mrs. Murray mention something about plantin' them being a notion of yourn, I thought ye might have a few suggestions."

"Oh, yes. Uh... Well, they're rather good baked and smeared with butter," Claire began, her hands slowing at their task as her mind drifted to the question of potatoes. "Boiled and mashed work in a similar fashion... They fit in pies as well as in stews - cubed, sliced, diced... They're delicious fried whether they're cut and fried or mashed first. I actually don't think there's a wrong way to cook a potato. I knew a man once who would even eat them raw, though I wouldn't recommend it."

"And did ye have potatoes often where ye were from originally?" Mrs. Crook asked carefully, her eyes intent on Claire.

Claire's brow furrowed. "In Oxfordshire, you mean?"

"Aye... if that's where ye're from  _originally_." It was the closest Mrs. Crook could bring herself to acknowledging her suspicions aloud. 

The furrow remained in Claire's forehead and her hands had stilled completely as she seemed to contemplate how to respond. "Where I'm from we did have potatoes more than I've had since being here in Scotland. But I wouldn't worry too much about how to cook them until after we manage to harvest them successfully. Jamie and Ian are working that out right now."

"Aye. It can take folk a while to adjust to that what's new but they soon grow attached to it and canna bear to be parted from it when the next change comes along," Mrs. Crook observed. 

"Quite true," Claire agreed as she refocused her attention on her hands and the cutting she'd been distracted from at the beginning of their conversation. "Before too long I'm sure the people hereabouts will wonder there was ever a time they didn't have potatoes as a regular part of their diet."

 _I don't know how long it will take for me to work up the courage to ask so impertinent a question of Mrs. Fraser but I at least feel I've made a start. It would help if I knew_ how _she managed to find her way here in the first place - how do the stones work? If she did come with a purpose, did someone send her? There might be some way to bring the subject up that would reassure her of my own intent being only to help and not to bring her trouble, a word to use as a sign that I know what she is without frightening her into keeping quiet. But all I know of these travelers is from the fairy stories. Grannie Crook was fond of a few though she claimed they were not entirely accurate - then again, how would she know having never met a traveler herself?_


	4. Fairy Stories

"Have I ever told ye of my old Grannie Crook?” Mrs. Crook asked Claire while she helped her go through her stores in the stillroom.

Everything she’d made during those first weeks after her and Jamie’s arrival at Lallybroch when they were first wed had been left after her sudden departure and now Claire was determined to sort through what she wanted to hold onto and what she felt it would be irresponsible to continue using. Mrs. Crook had eagerly volunteered to assist her in disposing of the decoctions that Claire deemed unfit and wash their delicate bottles so they could be refilled. While they worked, the older woman talked.

“Well, she wasna my Grannie exactly. She was my husband's grandmother but she took a shine to me having no granddaughters by her son. We would work like this—not on brews or medicaments like this,” she corrected herself. “It was usually only over the mending or her knitting—she made me the most lovely shawl as a wedding gift. It was so delicate and lacey, the light shone through like the sun on a spider’s web—ye’d think it had been fashioned by the fairies.”

She watched Claire’s face at the mention of fairies but Claire had lined up a series of bottled liquids that had all turned a muddy brown color and had bits of plant matter stuck to the bottom. She un-stoppered the first to take a tentative sniff, scrunched up her nose, and shook her head, adding the bottle to the basket that needed to be discarded.

“Perhaps she meant it to be like the fairies made it—that’s what she would talk of when we would sit there—the fairies. She talked of fairy hills and how the wee folk would steal people from one time and plant them in another not their own.”

At that she noticed the way Claire’s head jerked to attention but she tried not to react herself.

“Are ye familiar with the tales yerself then? Have ye ever been to one of the hills they mark with the stones?”

“I… yes, actually—well… I’ve seen one in passing… the stones on the hill. But the stories—” She recovered quickly from the surprise of the conversational turn and relaxed again as she continued with her own story. “When Jamie and I were at Leoch… Colum MacKenzie has a bard who sings such tales. When… when I first came to the castle I was invited to hear him play one night. I didn’t have any Gaelic—though I believe the man sang in Welsh as well and I don’t have any of that either. Jamie translated the stories for me. They were beautiful but sad too.”

“Aye, tales like that usually are. It must be rough being torn from yer place like that,” Mrs. Crook speculated.

“I would expect so, yes,” Claire agreed with a solemn air before her spirits seemed to lift again. “But you know, I had a friend once who said that—now how did she put it… sometimes you find yourself on a strange path you never expected, but that doesn’t mean it can’t lead you to a bonny place.” She smiled.

“That’s a good attitude to have about life,” Mrs. Crook said with a smile. “Of course, the stories of the folk the fairies steal away, they always go back whence they came. She always said how it must be a relief to them to get home again with their tales to tell—worked to instill in me what she called the greater purpose of our kind.”

“Did she believe she was one of the fairies?” Claire asked, confused and a little distracted as she poked at an ointment she’d made with some goose grease and herbs—it had hardened with time so she ran a knife around the edge of it’s small tin and worked to free it.

“No one of the fairies, no,” Mrs. Crook shook her head. “She said her folk were helpers of sorts. That the Crooks knew the truth of the tales and had made it their purpose to help the weary travelers, to guide them home again.”

Claire succeeded in freeing the pat of hardened ointment and turned it over in her hands. The underside and core were still soft and salvageable. She began scraping the useful part out of the harder shell and put it back in its tin. She would still need to make more but this would do for the time being.

“And do you believe in it all?” Claire finally asked Mrs. Crook without looking up from the task at hand. “Fairies and people travelling through time?”

Mrs. Crook took a moment’s pause to think of the best way to answer that would reassure her mistress that she could be trusted if Claire had anything she wished to confide.

“There are miracles in the Bible that strike me as more outlandish than fairies pulling folk through time,” she said, “though it may be blasphemous to say as much.”

“And did your Grannie Crook’s insistence on assistance stay with you as well? Or do you think you should prefer not to get involved?” Claire looked up then having finished removing the tough crust from the useful ointment. She took a towel from the sideboard and began wiping the substance from her hands.

“I should think I’d be understanding to anyone in unfortunate circumstances, however mysteriously they may have come about. Tis the Christian thing te do, I’m sure. But I shouldna wish to impose on those as dinna wish for aid,” she responded.

Claire looked pleased.

“And what do ye think yerself about the stories? Do ye think there’s truth in them?” Mrs. Crook dared to ask.

Claire paused, the pleased expression fading from her face into one of uncertainty. “I think… that people will search for explanations for what cannot yet be understood. Once one removes impossible explanations for something, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Mrs. Crook smiled. “I suppose that makes some kind of sense,” she said, turning the riddle over in her mind. “And what d’ye think of—?”

But when she looked up to finish her question, Claire had already disappeared from the doorway.

_When she returned, I thought it better not to return to the question I had intended to ask. Anyone that sees Lord and Lady Broch Tuarach together would ken immediately that she did not wish to leave her husband—though I am curious to learn what the world she left behind is like. I believe she understands now that she can confide in me but she shows no sign of doing so._


	5. Sending a Message Through Time

If ever there was a time when Mrs. Crook thought Mrs. Fraser would confide in her about the future, the arrival of a letter from the Bonnie Prince in France would have been when she expected it. The both of them became quite sullen and distraught and the talk of the Bonnie Prince raising an army to challenge the English gave Mrs. Crook a sense of deep foreboding. But if Mrs. Fraser knew about what was to come, she said nothing to the housekeeper. The Laird and Lady of Broch Tuarach gathered their resources together, gathered men willing and able to fight, and prepared to march out and join the growing Rising. Mrs. Crook did overhear her mistress reminding Jenny to mind the potatoes—the damn potatoes again—in their absence and the way she said it lent Mrs. Crook to believe that something bad was coming.

The failure of the Rising and news of Culloden—when it did come—was not entirely unexpected. But Mrs. Crook could not have guessed that anything worse than that could follow until the wagon arrived bearing Jamie’s body—still alive, as it turned out, but alone and gravely wounded. Claire wasn’t with him and he was in no condition to be asked about her.

Jenny stepped in to treat her brother’s badly festering leg wound while Mrs. Crook and Ian watched, knowing that Claire would have known the best way to heal it and fearing he would lose the leg if not his life without her—but without her they weren’t sure he wanted to live. The fever that ravaged his body left him delirious and no one was willing to leave him alone for any length of time. Mrs. Crook volunteered to take turns sitting with him so that Jenny and Ian would have more time to rest themselves.

Though Jenny’s methods for treating the leg were harsh, they proved effective. The inflammation and swelling subsided and though he was still feverish, he didn’t burn as hot as he had before. The likelihood that he would survive the ordeal physically increased day by day. As he came back to himself more and more, his turmoil over Claire increased.

Mrs. Crook heard Jenny telling Ian that Jamie had said Claire was gone and that he’d asked none of them to speak of her to him again, but Mrs. Crook wasn’t satisfied—not knowing what she did about who Claire was and where she came from. Jenny and Ian might presume their sister-in-law was dead, but there was a second possibility they didn’t know about.

Mrs. Crook watched over Jamie as he and the rest of the house slept but as he was wont to do since his return, he stirred and woke, reaching for something—or someone—who wasn’t there. Blinking at the renewed realization, Mrs. Crook pounced.

“My Lady Broch Tuarach,” she began quietly. “Ye’ve said she’s gone—but _where_ has she gone?” she pressed her laird. “Did she go back through the fairy stones? Or has she died as ye’ve let yer sister think?”

Jamie started at the mention of the stones and Mrs. Crook nodded.

“Aye. That’s what I thought.”

“Did Claire… tell ye? About the stones at Craigh na Dun?” he asked in disbelief.

“My husband’s Grannie Crook told me of travelers as come through the fairy circles,” she told him in hushed and—she hoped—soothing tones. “She wanted to be sure I kent the truth of the matter—that the folk who travel such are hapless travelers, no fairies. She said it was our duty as believers to help such folk get back to their rightful times if they needed it. But no, yer wife never confided her truth to me.”

“Then how…”

“I saw the signs—didna believe the truth of what Grannie Crook said until I met her—but yer… Claire… There was something special about her and we all kent it, whether we could put our finger on it or no.”

Jamie swallowed hard but nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Crook said quietly. “She didna confide the truth in me but she didna need to. Grannie Crook said we were to help travelers get to their rightful times and anyone as saw Claire with ye could tell—did they ken the truth or no—that she was in her rightful place when she was beside ye.”

“I wasna supposed to live,” Jamie murmured. “I… I sent her through to protect her—to protect _them_. And they are… safe, I hope. But I wasna supposed to have to… live with this… to ken I’d…”

“Perhaps…” Mrs. Crook stopped, uncertain exactly _what_ she was trying to say. “Perhaps there’s a way ye can get a message to her. Perhaps there’s a way I can help fetch her back to ye.”

“No,” Jamie insisted, shaking his head with more enthusiasm than he’d shown for anything since returning. “It isna safe here—no for her, no in her condition. And… what kind of life could she have here now? I canna stay in my family’s house wi’out putting the lot of ye in danger. As soon as I can be moved, I must hide away somewhere the Red Coats canna find me and there’s no knowing if or when I’ll be able to walk a free man under my own name again. No. She canna come back.” He choked on his last words and Mrs. Crook could tell he was fighting back tears.

“No a summons then,” she agreed. “But ye can pass a message along to her nonetheless,” she insisted.

He turned his gaze to her and just stared. “Ye think ye can get a message to her two hundred years from now?” There was skepticism but also desperate hope in his voice.

“Aye. I can try. And if Grannie Crook is watching o’er me, she’ll be sure it finds her.”

A few minutes later, Mrs. Crook brought him parchment, ink, and a quill and left him to his thoughts as he penned a final letter to the wife and child he would never see again.

_I have his letter sealed and will enclose it in one of my own—though first I must settle on what to say. I must have faith that my descendants will guard it in the years to come and help it find its way to my Lady Broch Tuarach in her own time. Though my Laird says he does not wish for his wife to return for her own sake and safety, I cannot help but hope that this letter will work and that she will find her way back to her husband. She did not need my help on this side of time, but perhaps I can help her in this way, through my children’s children down the line to her time. My granddaughter knows the tales and hopefully she’ll pass them on as well and a Crook will fulfill Grannie Crook’s wish that we help a traveler find her way through the faerie stones to her rightful time once more._


	6. Epilogue: November 1766

_It has been an age since I took up this book to put my thoughts down. The letter that master Jamie wrote during a night while recovering from the wounds he suffered at Culloden appears to have done its job—strange when I can see it still safely sealed and tucked away in the pages of this book where it has been since I wrote it. Claire has returned to her rightful time and place as I’ve wished she would. The pair of them will need some time to find their way back to themselves as they were before she left, but I am glad to have lived to see her back again and to know that I have helped her find her way. I understand now better than ever before why it was Grannie Crook wanted so much to believe and to help—seeing the two of them looking as young as they did then makes me feel as young as_ I _was then, if not younger. It seems there are more ways than one to travel through time._


End file.
